Mobile Moviemaking Made Easy

This free online  course will teach you how to shoot movies that will delight audiences. We will cover every kind of project including travelogues, family documentaries, commercials, music videos, and vblogs.

All it takes is 1) a smartphone (or other mobile), 2)  the desire to make a short movie, and 3) mastery of about 100 simple techniques.

How simple? Here’s an example. Shoot with your camera in the horizontal ( landscape) orientation. No equipment needed. Just turn the camera so that what you see is wider than tall. There are strong reasons for doing this. We’ll cover them in the course.

Most of the tips require no gear. A few—like taking a bird’s-eye shot by climbing on a chair—use stuff that’s usually close at hand. When equipment or software is needed, it will usually be free (like iMovie)  or inexpensive (like FiLMiC Pro).

This course is for beginners. But because you’ll probably soon progress beyond the novice stage, we’ll include links to advanced techniques and to some of the astonishing but inexpensive gear.

One final and very important point: You don’t have to learn everything to make movies that are worth watching. The simple act of starting a video with a surprising close-up will elevate your work far above the home-movie level.

To learn about developments as they happen, sign up for our free newsletter on this or any page of the site. And follow us @mobilemoviemag.

Now if you’re ready, here’s the first technique. We’ll be posting new lessons every Monday.

The Lessons

Start with a close-up.

Give your video a real movie ending.

Shoot wide, not tall.

Take short shots.

Create a “two shot” featuring two subjects in one frame.

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